From social work to elected office: social workers’ experiences in municipal and regional politics in Czechia

The article examines how social workers experience holding elected office in municipal and regional politics in Czechia. It addresses a gap in research on social workers in politics, which has focused mainly on pathways into office and evidence from Western contexts. The study uses a theory-driven qualitative design based on ten semi-structured interviews with social workers who hold, or have previously held, elected office in municipal and regional politics. The findings show that entry into politics was usually driven by the limits of direct practice, reinforced by personal experiences of injustice and relational recruitment. Once elected, respondents had to learn political action within institutional, party-political, and bureaucratic constraints while trying to preserve a value orientation centred on justice, dignity, and concern for marginalised groups. Elected office emerged as meaningful yet fragile, with sustainability shaped by compromise, strain, and limited influence over time.